System And Method For Collecting, Recycling, And Tracking Products Such As Golf Balls

Abstract

A system and method for incentivizing recycling of collected products by providing both an incentive award and information about the post-recycling stream designation of the collected products to a user. The collected products are assigned a trace element which is machine readable data input, with scanners or detectors disposed along the recycling stream. Once a decision is made regarding the recycle designation for a collected product, that information is provided to the user. A computer program that stores and calculates the award could be used to calculate analogous or ancillary calculations regarding post-recycling designations to enable comparisons with other users and online competition.

1 . A method of tracking collected products through a recycling process with a computer, said method comprising the steps of:
 assigning a trace element to the collected products to uniquely identify the collected products and storing the trace element data in the computer;   collecting the collected products from a user at a collection point;   inputting the trace element data into a computer program;   calculating with the computer program an incentive award associated with the collected products;   communicating the award to the user;   receiving intended post-recycling designation data for the collected products into the computer program; and   communicating the post-recycling designation to the user.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising a step of processing the collected products for recycling. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising steps of determining intended post-recycling designation for the collected products and communicating data associated with the post-recycling designation to the computer program. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said step of communicating the award to the user is done via a network. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said step of communicating the post-recycling designation to the user is done via a network. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising a step of storing the incentive award calculation and the intended post-recycling designation data of the user. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 6 , further comprising a step of comparing the incentive award calculation or the intended post-recycling designation data of a first user to that of a second user to enable a competition among users. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 7 , wherein the competition among users is conducted through an online interface. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 6 , further comprising the step of graphically representing the incentive award calculation or the intended post-recycling designation data of the user. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 6 , further comprising the step of producing an analogous calculation using the post-recycling designation data to provide examples of use of the collected products. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the incentive award is selected from the group consisting of products, coupons, rebates, gift points, reward points, gift cards, credits, monetary awards, or combinations thereof. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 11 , further comprising a step of storing the incentive award calculation and incentive award for the user. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 12 , further comprising a step of comparing the incentive award calculation of a first user to that of a second user to enable a competition among users. 
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein the competition among users is conducted through an online interface. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein said step of communicating the award to the user is done via a network. 
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the trace element is selected from the group consisting of an optical machine-readable representation of data, an RFID chip, or other machine translatable device applied to the collected products or batches of collected products. 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the step of receiving intended post-recycling designation data for the collected products is achieved via machine detection of the trace element. 
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the step of receiving intended post-recycling designation data for the collected products is achieved via input from a recycling processor location. 
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the collected products includes at least one particular collected product, and wherein a first component of the particular collected product has a first intended post-recycling designation and a second component of the particular collected product has a second intended post-recycling designation;
 wherein the step of assigning a trace element to the collected products to uniquely identify same and storing the trace element data in the computer includes assigning a first trace element to the first component of the particular collected product and a second trace element to the second component of the particular collected product and storing both the first trace element data and the second element data in the computer;   wherein the step of receiving intended post-recycling designation data includes receiving the first intended post-recycling designation for the first component of the particular collected product and the second intended post-recycling designation data for the second component of the particular collected product into the computer program; and   wherein the step of communicating intended post-recycling designation to a user includes communicating both the first intended post-recycling designation and the second intended post-recycling designation to a user.   
     
     
         20 . A method for incentivizing recycling of collected products comprising the steps of:
 collecting the collected products from a user;   assigning a trace element to the collected products to uniquely identify same and storing the trace element data in a computer;   inputting the trace element data into a computer program;   calculating with the computer program an incentive award associated with the collected products;   communicating the award to the user;   receiving intended post-recycling designation data for the collected products into the computer program via machine detection of the trace element through a recycling processing location;   communicating the post-recycling designation to the user;   storing the incentive award calculation and the intended post-recycling designation data of the user; and   comparing the incentive award calculation or the intended post-recycling designation data of a first user to that of a second user to enable a competition among users.   
     
     
         21 . A method for incentivizing recycling of products, the method comprising the steps of:
 assigning a trace element to the products to uniquely identify the products and storing the trace element data in the computer;   collecting the products from a user at a collection point;   inputting the trace element data into a computer program;   calculating with the computer program an incentive award associated with the products;   communicating the award to the user;   receiving intended post-recycling designation data for the products into the computer program; and   communicating the post-recycling designation to the user.   
     
     
         22 . The method of  claim 21 , wherein the step of collecting the products occurs before the step of assigning a trace element to the products. 
     
     
         23 . The method of  claim 21 , wherein the step of collecting the products occurs after the step of assigning a trace element to the products. 
     
     
         24 . The method of  claim 21 , wherein an individual trace element is assigned to each of the products to uniquely identify each of the products so that post-recycling data for each of the products is received into the computer program.